a blog from Modern Quilt Studio

experiences

Like you, I have watched Sewing with Nancy over the years and admired Nancy Zieman’s skills and down-to-earth personality. We met Nancy several years ago and have found her to be a warm and generous person as well. I drove Bill crazy while reading Seams Unlikely, Nancy’s autobiography. I kept saying, “You’re never going to believe this!” followed by reading aloud the part of the book that surprised me. It is an extraordinarily inspiring read. Your heart will break for her at times and you’ll find yourself gasping, “Oh my goodness…” a lot. Mostly you will get a glimpse of how a woman in small-town Wisconsin started an iconic TV show and overcame hurdle after hurdle after hurdle all while giving birth, adopting a child and managing a growing business.

So when Nancy emailed last spring asking if we would be guests on Sewing with Nancy, we were thrilled and decided to publish Magic Inch Quiltsin conjunction with our appearance on the show. Sewing with Nancy is a well-oiled machine staffed with highly competent people who have worked with Nancy for decades. We talked through the content of the episodes and planned out with Nancy the step-outs and sequence of the projects. She’s quick, decisive and very thorough because she knows exactly what the viewer needs to see to understand the concept without wasting a minute.

Sewing with Nancy airs at different times across North America. While some watched our episodes in December, others told me they just saw one just last weekend. If you missed them, head over to NancyZieman.com where you’ll be able to see both episodes and find a treasure trove of All Things Nancy. If you’d like to win a copy of the DVD of both episodes, leave a comment below telling us what you’ve learned from Nancy over the years. We’ll randomly draw a winner on Tuesday, February 7. [Note: given that the DVD is formatted for US DVD players, we will only ship the DVD to a US address. Thanks for your understanding.]

The steamer has been working overtime today as we ready dozens of quilts for an exhibit that begins next week at the Wisconsin Quilt Museum on Modern Quilts. The exhibit runs through the beginning of April and we’ll be there for the Artists’ Reception in February. The quilts we’ve chosen for the show represent a fraction of the quilts we’ve made over the past 15 years as most of our quilts are in people’s homes and not available for a four-month loan. There will also be some never-before-seen quilts in the show including Fishbone, which is being quilted as I write. Seeing quilts that span the last 15 years has helped us to see how far our work has progressed and we think it will be interesting for viewers to compare the work we did in 1999 to our recent work.

It would have been unimaginable to use in 1999 that our work would be included at such a large scale in a museum because those were the days of people still on the fence about whether or not it was acceptable to machine quilt. Happily many voices and approaches have come to define Modern Quilting and you’ll see many of them at this show. Let us know what you think at the Artists’ Reception in February.

After months of planning and countless emails, phone calls and contracts, Bill, Sophie and I arrived in Seattle on Friday morning.

We boarded the ferry for Bainbridge Island (yes, Sophie is now officially taller than I am but still loves to make silly faces for the camera), which was our first stop. This stop was sponsored and organized by Kathy Mack of Pink Chalk Studio and it was lovely. Bill and I lectured at the beautiful new Bainbridge Island Art Museum, which recently opened, and then made our way to the charming Esther’s Fabric Shop owned by Barbara Kirk down the street for a wine and treats reception and book signing.

Barbara Kirk and Kathy Mack

Esther’s is a really nice shop because it has very nice fabrics for garment sewing as well as quilting. There’s no junky stuff, just a group of great fabrics, trims and tools galore. It was a lovely way to spend Friday night and everyone was warm and enthusiastic.

Saturday Bill taught a color class while Sophie and I checked out some of the island’s charming shops including a stop back to Esther’s where we bought some fabric and embroidery floss and the Churchmouse, which had a line 15 people deep but had an incredible selection of beautiful yarns. The merchandizing was lovely as well.

Later we met up with my cousin and her dog for a picnic here. It has been a veeeeery long time since I’ve had a day off and it was restorative.

After Bill’s workshop was over, we hopped in the car and headed south to St. Helens, Oregon. The landscape was so different and the presence of the lumber industry was everywhere, including this shot taken from across the street from our hotel.

I taught a curves class to the Columbia River Piecemakers Quilt Guild at a community room owned by the Soil Conservation District office.

Here’s the part that’s always hard to explain if you’ve never taught a class or given a lecture to a group of quilters. There aren’t many jobs in which one shows up to work with people really excited to see you. In fact they are so excited that they go to all kinds of trouble and effort to show you hospitality. Barbara at Esther’s had wine, grapes, shortbread cookies and tables set up for us to vend our magazines, books and patterns as well as sign books. Kathy Mack bought a copy of a Kid’s Guide to Sewing and asked Sophie to sign it.

When we leave, people thank us for coming and tell us how much they learned and how fun it was.

This morning when I arrived to teach the curves workshop, one generous woman had brought an large basket of fresh figs she had picked from the fig tree in her yard.

Another had brought chocolate, cookies, cheese and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. The woman who brought the figs gave us a bag of them to take in the car as we headed south. One woman, Ann, who had expressed skepticism at the beginning of the workshop about her ability to piece curves, gave me a thumbs up as I was heading out the door three hours later. She had not only mastered curves but she had inset a full circle with no tucks, much to her astonishment.

Obviously we charge money to teach these workshops but the bigger paycheck comes in that last 15 minutes of a class when you look around and people have learned something new. There are piles of blocks or colorful groupings of scraps that represent something learned.

The room is usually quiet and people are busily sewing or processing all of the ideas that are now in their brains that weren’t there three hours prior. After our lecture on Bainbridge Island, one woman casually mentioned the next day that she hadn’t been able to get to sleep until 1am because she was thinking about all that we talked about. This is the best part of our jobs. This is why we work so hard. I wish everyone could enjoy this kind of affirmation in their jobs. Most days we deal with someone who is upset because their magazine arrived with bent corners or they want us to help them figure out how to translate the measurements for a pattern for a queen-sized quilt into that for a king-sized bed. But it’s always humbling to walk into that room of people, who have paid their hard-earned money, gotten up early on a Saturday morning and hauled their sewing machines and containers of fabrics to some church fellowship haul or some library conference room because they think we might be able to inspire them or teach them something useful. Sometimes the hospitality and enthusiasm is something I wish I could bottle and take out when I need a little pick-me-up when I’m filing sales tax or withholding tax forms. And if I could, I’d bring a glorious basket of fresh figs to your workplace and thank you for coming as you headed home at the end of the day.

Tomorrow: A Stash class here in Ashland OR. I’m teaching while Bill and Sophie go white-water rafting. Stay tuned. Below is the rest of the itinerary. I know there are still spots in the evening color workshop in Santa Monica on Tuesday Aug 6. Others may be sold out. Check with the organizer.